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Ritchie's King Arthur film revealed

Before RocknRolla (Filmstalker review) I didn't have a lot of time for Guy Ritchie, of course I loved his two London gangster type films, but I was getting a little bored of them, and even though that film did a great job I was expecting more of the same from him. Then came Sherlock Holmes and surprised the hell out of a lot of us.

Now he's set to make a film about the King Arthur legend, something we heard the other day, but now it's confirmed we find out more about the intended story and it sounds even further away from what we might expect from the director.

This differs from the King Arthur story we know of today where he defended Britain against Saxon invaders, formed the Round Table and gathered his Knights together, and went on various quests including the search for the Holy Grail.

According to the story from Variety and The Guardian, these tales tell of the King travelling to Rome and defeating Julius Caesar, as well as taking the crown of Emperor of Rome. Still, many of the tales are the more traditional stories that we know of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

So the fact that this film is going back to the original tales from 1485 is something special in itself, but then add in the writer of Trainspotting and the director of modern London gangster films, and there's a couple of extra dimensions in there that make me wonder what kind of film we'll end up with.

The great news is that this is really diverse for Guy Ritchie, and with Sherlock Holmes he's shown that he can deliver something exciting and popular with audiences that's outside that London gangster arena. Granted, there were still many similarities with Holmes and that world, but I wonder if this will be another great positive step in the diversification of his career.

I think this could really work out well and deliver something exciting for audiences, perhaps something positive for the King Arthur story, and definitely another good move for Ritchie.